Field
This disclosure is generally related to automatic content distribution. More specifically, this disclosure is related to determining how to disseminate content based on contextual information extracted from at least the content, from a user's personal computing device, and/or from any computing or storage device accessible by the user's personal computing device.
Related Art
Advances in personal computing technologies have made it easier for people to share data with others. For example, when a user collaborates with others to create a document, the user may send updated drafts of the document to others via email, or the user may store the document on a server from which others can retrieve the document. As another example, the user can share pictures or other information related to his current activity by posting a status update on a social-media web service (e.g., a micro-blogging website or an online social network). By posting this information on the social-media web service, the user is allowing others to view his content at their leisure.
However, the task of sharing content with various people can become complicated if the user typically interacts with different people using different technologies. It may be the case that the user shares his personal life with close friends and family over one or more social-media channels, but not all of the user's contacts may have access to view (or may not be aware of) these social-media channels. To make matters worse, the user may know an email address for only some people in his close social circle, and may rely on other communication channels to communicate with the rest (e.g., in-person, via a chat client, via telephone, or via a short messaging service (SMS)). In this situation, the user may have to take the time to determine how he can communicate with each target recipient, and may need to send the content to them by using different technologies for different recipients.